Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
by caramelo
Summary: He hurts her time and time again but she can't let him go. AU from the end of season 3. LB oneshot.


_**Slow Dancing in a Burning Room**_

_(Five times he sought forgiveness and one time she hurt him back)_

_By: caramelo_

Time Frame - Sometime after the beginning of Season Four. What if Brooke and Lucas had decided to stay together?

_1. Somewhere a Clock Is Ticking_

He told her they would do something today because they haven't seen each other outside of school and basketball for weeks, but its two-going-on-three in the afternoon, and he still hasn't called her. Lucas keeps telling himself, just a few more minutes, just a few more and he'll walk out this door and dial her number, and they'll have a good enough time, awkward in spots because that's what they are, but they'll both end up enjoying themselves in the end because he loves her quirky sharpness and she just plain-as-day loves him.

But the clock rolls from verging-on-three to three and then past three, and he still hasn't made a move in that direction. _What's wrong with you? _he berates himself. _She's waiting._

What kind of guy is stupid enough to keep a girl like that waiting?

Brooke's perfect – for him, at least – all cutting edges and bitchy smirks and an easy grace with words once she's decided to let you in. She doesn't like to show it, but she's got a good heart underneath a cold smile that doesn't really reach her eyes that often.

Putting it that way, he frowns, makes her sound kind of like a fuck-up.

Which she is, probably, he allows. With a mother like hers, Brooke has a hard time with this kind of stuff. She's an emotional mess that she doesn't want anybody else to see. She doesn't like to let anybody see a lot of little things about her, which is why he is (but should be more) grateful that she lets him in through small, unexplained ways of hers that don't really ever hit him till later.

_"I'm really kind of shallow," _she said to him one day, shrugging her shoulders as if unconcerned, even reconciled with the idea.

_"Really?" _he teased, _"I would have never guessed."_

She quirked the corners of her lips in a playful smirk. _"I get it from my mother. When I was little, she used to put me in these little designer dresses and then get so pissed off when I got them dirty. It wasn't my fault though, really, that I was always so clumsy."_

At first glance, their conversations – little nothings like this – seem so shallow and unfulfilling. However, when he replays them in his mind later, he always realizes that she let a few things about herself slip; Brooke's so clever that he wouldn't be surprised if she does it on purpose, just to see if he cares enough to pick up on them.

And he does, usually, when he takes the time. He likes to unlock little pieces of this beautiful girl who hates to let anybody in. Not that she'll ever know that he takes this kind of time for her.

It's three-going-on-four, and she's still waiting for her phone to ring. He should leave, he knows, he _needs _to leave now, he needs to call her, but he already knows he won't.

* * *

_2. Left with Alibis and Lying Eyes_

She's dragged him outside the door of the gym after another basketball game, and her eyes are cold again, but with her cold is just another way of saying sad. She wants more, but she doesn't know how to ask for it. He knows, of course, because he knows her, and he knows through all her stumbling words and alternatively cold silences that she's begging him to let her go. But he can't do that yet.

"If you're not that into me then…"

She can't finish, and she hates herself for that. She's not strong here; she can't look at him because it makes her feel vulnerable. So she looks anywhere but at him and that's what gives her away in the end.

"It's not that at all," he says hurriedly.

He loves her, he does – or he could. He wants to. He wants to love this girl like she deserves, and he wants her to be happy. He wants them to be happy together because how much more perfect could this girl be for him? He wants to be able to appreciate that and not take her for granted anymore.

He can tell by the way that she keeps her eyes fixed on some far off nothing instead of looking back up at him, that she doesn't believe him this time. "You have to know that, right?" he says, desperately.

She looks at him fast, then looks away, and the way something behind her eyes shatters used to make him think that the anger was finally dissipating, but now he thinks it might be something inside her breaking.

She looks up at him again. "Sometimes," she says, because sometimes it really doesn't feel like it. The word is stiff and uncertain, and the way her voice quavers resonates inside him.

_Ouch_, he thinks and knows he deserved it. She doesn't often let him see the way he hurts her so plainly, but when she does, it always cuts into him deep.

"I'll do better," he promises. "I've just been so busy with basketball…"

"Yeah," she says stiffly, but hesitantly allows herself to be coaxed into his arms even though he knows it makes her feel like she's giving in again.

* * *

_3. How Do I Fix My Head_

She's tired. He can see that, but so can everybody else. She's tired and something's wrong, and she says it isn't a big deal or anything, but she's not letting him in. Now that he thinks about it, she never really lets him in. Maybe if she could trust him, maybe if he didn't hurt her right from the start, she would, but he did and she won't – or can't.

"What's wrong?" he says, thinking that it _has _to be him again, but he called her three times this week and he know it doesn't take that much to please her anymore.

"Nothing," she says, shaking her head, refusing to meet his eyes.

"Come on," he pleads. "Don't be like this."

She shakes her head again, but this time, she looks up. "It's not you," she says quietly.

"Then what is it?"

"It's not really important," she says.

"It's upsetting you," he protests.

"I'm dealing with it," she says, retreating into an exit.

"Not like this!" he calls after her. Softer, "I wish you wouldn't play those games."

It's not fair of him to say that and he knows it. If anything, he toys with her – gives her small nothings in hopes that she'll think they mean something, or they will someday, and he wants them to but doubts that they ever will. He's just not wired that way as much as he wishes he could change that. The last thing he ever wants to do is hurt her again.

Nathan comes into the classroom with a frown. "Something's wrong with your girlfriend."

He looks at Nathan sharply. How can this guy read her just as well as he can? She's not that easy to figure out. But then he remembers the casual grace Nathan and Brooke share between them – the easy camaraderie and flirty innocence that Lucas and she should share instead. She trusts Nathan a little more, Lucas knows, because Nathan can't hurt her as bad as he can and because Nathan wouldn't do it either. Nobody in their right minds would hurt her. She's this perfect, smart, beautiful creature with endless legs stretching from a teasingly short skirt, and she is loved, despite what she thinks to be true.

"What happened?" he asks.

Nathan shrugs. "I don't know. I was just joking around, and she yelled at me."

She never yells anymore. It's one of her things. She makes faces, she snaps out a quick little retort, she treats you with angry silences, but she never, ever yells. He doesn't understand how, because some of the things she puts up with would have anyone else screaming their heads off, but she regards this kind of loss of control with a wary mistrust, a remnant of a crazy, party girl life that she gave up for him.

"Yelled?" he echoes dubiously.

"I know it's weird, right?" Nathan says, shaking his head. "But she full-on screamed at me and then stormed off."

That was more up her alley, he allowed. The yelling was still painfully out-of-character, but she had this terrible tendency of literally running away from her problems, and this made sense to him.

"Where'd she go?" he asks.

"The girls' bathroom, I think," Nathan replies.

He nods, but says or does nothing else, remaining rooted to the spot. Nathan stares at him for a few beats, incredulously. "Aren't you going to check on her?"

He knows he should. He knows he should follow her like she wants him to, he knows he should wrap her up and not let her go until she feels safe from whatever issue is plaguing her today. He should insist that she tell him what's wrong, and not let her get away with that "I'm just tired" crap that she likes to pull so often.

He should.

"She just needs time alone," he says.

* * *

_4. I Hear the Bells_

It's been a good day.

She's been in a relatively chipper, hell_ outright_ chipper, mood all day in this little white cheerleading skirt that he can definitely appreciate and paired with that bright smile, she looks brilliant. "What's gotten into you?" he asks her, low, as his hands come to rest casually on her waist.

She giggles and tosses her hair and does these cute girly things that would be annoying on any other person, but it's been such a long time that he's seen them on her that they're such a weird and wonderful surprise that he can't help but smile down at her antics. "I'm just in a good mood," she says, wriggling playfully out of his grasp and flicking the towel she uses to dry her hair after practice at him. It hits his skin with a resounding crack, and she smiles impishly. "Gotta be faster than that."

"I'll get you for that," he threatens with a grin of his own, taking a few menacing steps toward her.

She shrieks and jumps back, scampering into the girls' locker room doors, just out his grasp. "Promise?" she calls over her shoulder, laughing.

He settles back on his heels, shaking his head, still grinning, and is suddenly aware of all eyes on him. "What?" he asks.

"Dude," one of the guys says, "What did you do to get her to smile like _that_?"

They're jealous, he can tell, because the majority of them are halfway in love with her and the rest are freshman, but she's already weaseled her way under their skin a little bit. He's the lucky one, he knows, and he doesn't deserve her.

That night after practice, the best he's remembered in a while, he follows her out the door, looking at her with new eyes and wondering if he isn't completely smitten. Usually, they tease a little, argue a little, sometimes fight some, but this time he moves straight in for the kill, wanting those painted-red lips fused to his, wanting to claim her as his.

She lets out a stifled giggle and writhes out of his arms. "I don't kiss ex-boyfriends," she says. "That's skanky."

He groans with an amused frustration. Earlier that day, they had been teasing and arguing, all in play, and she had said something particularly cutting to which his only response could be an exaggeratedly loud "We're over!" A couple of the guys had looked up hopefully at these words, but instead of finding a sodden girl to comfort, they had been met with happy laughter as she winked back at him and flounced off.

And he should have known better because she never forgets a thing he says, and he knows she's going to have fun with this one. "Come on," he laughs, trying to pull her back, "I take it back."

She laughs and writhes away again. "Nope," she says.

He lifts a brow. Two can play this game. "Fine," he says coolly. "Maybe you should leave then."

She lifts a sculpted brow of her own in return smoothly. "Fine," she echoes. "I will." And then, goddamnit, he should have known she would call his bluff and take off. She makes it within ten feet of her car when he races after her because despite everything _he can't stand to watch her walk away_ and gracelessly careens into her, sweeping her up before she loses her balance and carrying her to right back where they started, careful to keep her skirt proper.

"You're not leaving that easy," he growls and leans in.

She laughs, pure and melodic with its ingenuity. "I guess I can make an exception for ex-boyfriends who are sort of cute."

"You better," he says seriously, "because I'm going to kiss you now."

And their tongues are clashing and even in her kisses she's teasing him as her tongue flicks a few lazily playful circles around his and this time she's the first to pull away. He tries to pull her in again, pull her closer, but she's back to taunting words and scampering off, and a particularly smart turn of phrase over her shoulder makes him laugh out loud.

"That's what I love about you," he says, instinctively, without thinking.

The smile on her face freezes and so does she. He realizes that it's been a really long time since he's used that word around her, and from the conflicted expression on her face, she doesn't trust that it's true. He knows she's right to be careful.

"That's what I love about you," he says again, slowly, testing out the words on his tongue. She smiles weakly, still stricken dumb, and he has to change the subject to make it acceptable for her to run away the way he knows she wants to.

And she does, and he feels guilty all over again.

* * *

_5. Forever and Ever Amen_

She's beautiful and smart, and he's not the only knows this about her.

New York University, located a convenient one thousand miles away, reads into her transcripts and essays and sees something special in her – the same thing that he and everybody else sees and offers her a hefty scholarship.

She doesn't like change and she doesn't want to leave him, but he can see that she's at least excited by the possibility – and their offer to fly her up there for free to visit and for interviews. She's nervous about that, he can tell, because all this academic fervor and jargon is new to her and New York is so far away from everything she knows.

"I probably won't end up going there," she says, eyes shining, "but it's still pretty cool, you know? And I'd love to visit."

It's an opportunity she shouldn't pass over, but she will if Chapel Hill, a school close to home that's brilliant in its own right – though terribly small compared to the hustle and bustle of New York, accepts her and it means she can stay closer to him. He's amazed at his own hold over her, that this girl who is so brilliant herself is so captivated by a guy like him, and he's flattered. But he knows that in the end it just isn't fair.

They're supposed to have a date today, in between her double-shift at the clothing store she works at. She calls him at twenty after two while he screens it, and then leaves a message that's slightly disconcerted, but for the most part pretty upbeat. She's been in this fantastic mood lately, with everything coming together so neatly for her, and he's going to hate himself for this – so is she.

He's at this small house on the outskirts where her ex-best friend Peyton lives, nothing compared to the white mansion that she trots out of every time he comes to pick her up in his old, beat up red truck (he reduced to her to fits of giggles on their first date when he christened it a sturdy steed, the "Car of a True Man"). He's pulled this shit before and promised himself he'd never do it again, but maybe there are some mistakes you never grow out of.

"Who's that?" Peyton asks, rolling over.

"Nobody," he mutters, shielding the screen.

"It's her, isn't it?" Peyton says accusatorily. This is where Peyton's eyes narrow and her lips quirk down into a pout (Brooke pouts, sometimes, when she's in a particularly manipulative mood like this one time where he came to visit her at work the toilet got vilely clogged and she claimed not to know how to use the plunger – which, actually, she probably didn't). He dispels the memory of her perfect red, shiny lips – probably curving downwards in confusion and hurt at this point – and reaches out for Peyton's hand.

"Hey," he says, "I'm with you, okay?" ("You have to know I'm into you, right?" he told her all those times. "I've just got a lot going on with the basketball and everything…")

"You say that a lot," Peyton says.

"This time it's for real," he murmurs, silencing the phone reluctantly with the realization that there is no redemption from this (she's forgiven him so many times, already, and he can't ask her to do that for him anymore).

Peyton clutches onto him in the way that Brooke never could (god, after all the lies and cheating – how could she bring herself to cling to him like that?) and he hopes – no, knows – that this is right. Letting go of his perfect, beautiful, brilliant girl is right because she doesn't deserve the way he treats her and lies to her.

"I love you," Peyton says. ("That's what I love about you," he told her, words she didn't know what to do with, didn't even think she could trust, but that gave her the smallest sliver of hope that maybe things would finally be better).

He can't say it back right now, not when Brooke's missed call is vibrating in his memory, so he presses a kiss to Peyton's golden curls swept haphazardly across her forehead (a sharp contrast from long dark hair falling neatly down a camisole-covered back) and shuts his eyes.

Later, he hears that Brooke left her shift at work in tears, again, and that's when it finally sinks in for real that he's been ruining everything for her all along, and it hasn't been fair at all. She has the entire world welcoming her with open arms, but she can't even be happy with that, and it's all his fault. He's made her so unhappy, and he knows that it was past time to let her go.

* * *

_6. Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off_

The first time he sees her after the official break-up, she's dead-drunk.

It's not her thing, he knows, but lately she's been hanging out with this new girl Rachel, and that can only really spell trouble in the end. Whispers flurry across school that day about his too-giggly ex-girlfriend and her new best friend, and everybody wants to know, _are they really drunk?_

Another guy Ray, who's been hooking up with Rachel recently, tests the theory by pulling Rachel into the janitor's closet and comes back to report that yes, yes they are. Off of whiskey, from the taste of it.

He stares at his ex-girlfriend collapsing into another fit of uncontrollable giggles as Rachel leans in close, forehead-to-forehead like he used to do with her, and whispers secrets that only she can hear. She isn't this giggly, he knows, unless she's especially happy, and he knows she isn't happy.

Somebody told him, the other day, about how she dissolved into tears when her mother came to meet her for dinner at this really nice restaurant and how her mother's eyes narrowed into slits as she bitched her daughter out for being so weak. He really hates her mother a lot, probably just as much if not more than her mother hates him, when he hears stuff like this. Brooke tries so hard to please – to be perfect and beautiful and thin – and he knows in the end it's all for the approval that her mother doesn't ever give her.

"She has a temper," Brooke told him once, shrugging, and that was all she really ever said on the matter.

But back to now, she's apparently relapsed back into her old strung-out self and for the first time in a long time he's looking at her purely intoxicated. She's chattier and her eyelids are heavy in a way that makes her look seductive – something she hasn't bothered to try and pull off for a while now. She's cute, she's flirty, she's sharp – but she's not so slutty and dangerous anymore in the way that she looks right now. _Everybody _notices, and he spies a disturbing number of the guys in the hallway awkwardly shifting their legs in hopes of hiding the fact that their pants are suddenly stretched tighter than usual.

And this is how her story continues from there on. Every weekend – and then in the summer, weekday – is a new story of some slutty, drunken escapade. She purrs now under the attention she used to shy away from, and rumor has it that she's done stuff with more than one other guy on the basketball team. He can't know for sure because they don't meet his eyes anymore, but he hears whispers of how she coaxed Vegas into cheating on his girlfriend with her.

He's busy with Peyton and even busier with writing this new novel, still, so he really doesn't see a lot of her, but when he does, she's flirting shamelessly with all the guys used to play on the team with – guys that promised him that she was _off-limits_ – and as much as he doesn't want to see this, she's even got one of the teachers twirled around her little finger.

The last time she ever really meets his eyes at the very end of the summer, coincidentally the day after he breaks up with Peyton, and it's the last time he'll ever see her. It's her last shift at work before she leaves for New York, and a group of her friends have come in and she's been showered with hugs and cards and gifts. He's walking into the store under the pretence of buying something for his mother's birthday, feeling cold the way he's sure she used to, as he spies her saying goodbye to Nathan, and Nathan picking her right up and sweeping her off her feet. She laughs, and it's not as pure or genuine as it used to be with him, but it's close enough. She looks happy, at least.

And as she's running out the door with Rachel, past him, her eyes go wide and she pauses for a second, cocks her head, and says, "Bye, Lucas."

Her voice sounds curious, as if she's testing a theory, and he's brought back to all those times she stood in front of him and asked him for more. He doesn't know if she's doing that now because she's changed, and he can't read her anymore. That realization hurts the most, actually, so he won't think about it anymore.

"See you, Brooke," he grunts, avoiding her eyes because that's all he can manage.

She smiles then, and a quick sideways glance tells him that it's sweet and a little sad, more innocent than she's looked in a while, actually, but before either of them can say anything, she scampers out the door. He turns back to the clothing racks in front of him and hangs his head. She's always been running away from him.

**Author's Note: **So, it's been a while. I'm halfway into my first year of college now, and it's crazy to think that so much time has gone by. For readers of CYHOY, bear with me - I'm trying to find time anywhere I can, but I don't want to get back into it until I can promise decently frequent updates. Just wanted to let you guys know I'm still alive and this is something I've wanted to get out of my head for a little while now. The timing's a little vague and the story is moderately AU, but I hope you guys can forgive me for that. As always, please review :)


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